The Korean Foreigner

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Tuesday, March 31, 2015

It is impossible to say with a straight face that sexism does not exist in the workplace. I have seen casual sexism firsthand where the individuals involved had no idea that they were being sexist. I have also met people who sincerely believed that women ought to quarantine themselves to their homes as soon as they are married. They were some of the most unpleasant individuals that I ever had the misfortune of meeting.

Sexism does exist in the workplace, just as it exists in other aspects of society. Like racism, tribalism, and any other form of collectivism, sexism is one of the relics of a primitive mind that ought to have been stamped out a long time ago in order for us to be able to say that we live in a civilized society without having to blush each time we say it.

However, especially in this day and age, it is a stretch to imagine that sexism is widespread and practiced wholesale, especially within competitive industries.

However, let us assume for a moment that there is no difference in productivity between men and women as the phrase “equal pay for equal work” so often insinuates. Let us assume that despite the equal level of productivity between men and women, men do, indeed, on average earn 38% more than their female counterparts.

If that were true; if women are not getting equal pay despite doing the same job with the same level of productivity, then why would any business, which almost always cares about profitability above all else, employ any man at all? What reason would there be for businesses to not employ only women to fill all of their job positions and save 38% on their labor costs (labor costs usually being most businesses’ single greatest expenditure)? If greedy business executives’ main concern is almost always profit maximization, how do we account for so many “overpaid” men in the workforce?

So why did I bring this up? A few days ago, a trial that took place in the United States nearly brought a Silicon Valley venture-capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, down to its knees. For a quick run down on the case, check this link here.

The jury found the company “not guilty” of discriminating against the plaintiff, Ellen Pao, on the grounds of her gender. I did not follow the case closely so I do not know the details of the case. However, what I do know is that Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers was not the only one on trial. The entire tech industry was on trial and as far as the punditry is concerned, they have already judged that the entire industry is as guilty as sin.

But is there evidence that the entire industry's ranks are full of sexists and misogynists? No, there isn't. There have been isolated pockets of sexism, certainly, but conflating those incidents with conspiratorial whispers of “there must be more” does not constitute proof.

In the Wall Street Journal, a brilliant editorial (which is behind a paywall) was penned to pan these baseless accusations. For those who do not have a paid account for the Wall Street Journal, here are the highlights.

Ms. Pao’s suit is a perfect example of the feminist vendetta against Silicon Valley companies. That vendetta is based on the following conceit: Businesses refuse to hire or promote top-notch employees who would increase their profits, simply because those employees are female. Reality check: Any employer who rejects talent out of irrational prejudice will be punished in the marketplace when competitors snap up that talent. For the feminist line of attack on Silicon Valley to be valid, every tech firm would need to be conspiring in an industrywide economic suicide pact.

Even leaving aside market pressures, the claim that any high-profile company today would discriminate against highly qualified females defies political reality. Every elite business is desperate to hire and promote as many women as it can to fend off the gender lobby. Women who deny that their sex is an employment asset are fooling themselves.

The scant evidence that Ms. Pao assembled to prove that her advancement was blocked because of her gender reeks of the trendy academic theory of “microaggression” — a word that refers to racism and sexism that is otherwise invisible to the naked eye.

The market is the best antidote to discrimination. It rewards talent and penalizes prejudice. Silicon Valley, an unprecedented cornucopia of life-transforming innovation, is a shining example of entrepreneurial market forces. Kleiner Perkins might have won this recent skirmish, but Silicon Valley remains in the cross hairs of feminist crusaders and their media allies. Expect companies to load up on bean-counting diversity officers and sexual-harassment training.

I could not agree more. Of course, with an issue that is as controversial as identity politics, there is bound to be disagreement. Feel free to discuss in the comments section.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

We
all have our favorite teachers – the ones who showed us compassion,
given us advice, and taught us valuable lessons both in and out of
the classroom. As such, teaching is often referred to as a
noble calling. One of my favorite examples of the
sentimentalizing of the teaching profession is this
comic version of Taylor
Mali's half-rant-half-poem, “What Teachers Make.”

However,
despite the rhetoric, teaching is also an under-appreciated
profession. To explain, when it comes to remuneration, with the
exception of the small handful of superstar
teachers who become millionaires, most teachers are underpaid
(supposedly).

Enter
Robert Reich.
For those of you who are not familiar with him,
he is
a former Labor Secretary
who served under
President Bill
Clintonfrom
1993 to 1997. He is also a former(?) professor at Harvard's Kennedy
School of Government. He has also starred in his own documentary,
Inequality for All.

Recently,
he
posted on his Facebook page a supposed
conversation that he had with “a wealthy businessman” who
believed that American teachers were paid too much. During this
discussion that he had with this businessman, Reich bravely defended the embattled American teachers. He said that a
nation's human capital is more important than its financial capital;
and that, therefore, “if we want talented men and women to become
teachers rather than bankers, we need to pay them far more.”

This
Facebook post was a reinforcement of a similar post that he published
last year in his blog when he championed
teachers' “worth.” Not too surprisingly, the arguments he
used sounded suspiciously a lot like Karl Marx's discredited
and debunked labor
theory of value, which is an economic theory that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of labor required to produce it.Can you imagine if this were actually practiced? Can you imagine how much it would cost to pay for a single pencil? Considering how thoroughly the labor theory of value had been discredited and how long it has been since it had been discredited, Reich is either pretending to be unaware of this fact for a political reason, or he is truly clueless.

Furthermore, Reich does not seem to have
any idea how prices for commodities – yes, labor is an economic
commodity just as anything else – are determined, which is one of
the first basic principles that is taught in any semi-respectable
Economics 101 class. And I think it is very bizarre that he doesn't
seem to know how different laborers' wages are determined considering
the fact he used to be the Secretary of Labor! If a former Secretary
of Defense did not know where Iraq was located on the map, you'd be a
little concerned, too, wouldn't you?

One
of the core tenets of economics that Adam
Smith introduced to the world is the paradox
of value, which is also known as the diamond-water paradox. The
question goes like this: Considering the fact that water is vital for
life whereas diamonds are not, why are diamonds more expensive than
water?

The
premise behind the question is certainly true. Water is vital for the preservation of all life as we know it. The
popularity of diamonds, on the other hand, is the result of a
marketing
campaign gone wild. So why the huge difference in price?

That
is because when individuals make decisions, they consider the
additional cost and the additional benefit that would result from
making the decision. This additional cost and additional benefit that
people have to consider is known as Marginal
Costs and Marginal
Benefits respectively.

The
important thing to keep in mind is that whenever a person decides to
buy anything, he always has to consider the specific
price that he is paying for a specific
good that he is buying at that time. And then he has to consider how much additional benefit that he
will get from enjoying that additional good, which always comes at an
additional cost.

However,
things change drastically if people were not buying a specific good
at a specific price, but rather buying ALL of a particular good at
the same time.

For
example, if people all over the world simultaneously decided to buy
ALL the drinkable water in the world, then yes, due to scarcity of
drinkable water, the price of water would skyrocket. The price of
diamonds would seem like child's play at that point. In fact, if that
were to actually happen, unless your first name was Bill and your
last name was Gates, you would never be able to go anywhere near a
cup of water. That is, unless you had an army of very angry
machete-wielding psychopaths behind you.

That might be enough to get into the Coco Bongo, but for a glass of water? Please.Image Source

Fortunately,
however, people never behave this way (here's to hoping that a
nuclear apocalypse doesn't break out any time soon). In reality,
individuals purchase a specific amount of water or a specific amount
of diamonds at any given time. Therefore, what comes into play is
subjective
value, a concept that Reich cannot seem to get his head around.
What subjective value states is that the value of any good is
determined by the importance an individual places on that good, which is obviously different for every person.

Now,
because we do not have to worry that the next bottle of water that we
purchase will cost us tens of millions of dollars, unless we are
literally fighting for survival in the remains of a nuclear
wasteland, the truth of the matter is that most people value diamonds
more than they value a bottle of water. If you want proof of this,
try giving your girlfriend a bottle of Evian
instead of a diamond ring when you propose to her. And then tell me
how saying “But honey, water is vital for life whereas diamonds are
not” goes for you.

So
now we know why diamonds are more expensive than water. Thus, using
that example, we can apply it to Reich's argument that bankers ought
to be paid less and teachers ought to be paid more. After all, as
Taylor Mali said, teachers make a difference. So why do teachers earn
so little compared to bankers?

Like
the water-diamond paradox, when we think about why teachers are paid
less than bankers, we have to think about marginal costs, marginal
benefits, productivity, and subjective value.

If
people had to collectively choose between employing ALL teachers and
ALL bankers, most people would (hopefully) think that employing teachers would be more beneficial for society. Thankfully,
however, no one ever has to make such a choice in reality. After all,
if such a choice was made and teachers were paid as much as hedge fund managers, or more, then
practically no one would be able to afford to go to school.Or if the choice came down to teachers versus farmers, then practically no one would be able to afford to eat.

And
after we take into consideration marginal costs, marginal benefits, productivity, and subjective value, whether we like to admit it or not, for reasons
that range from marginal value that both professions provide for
society to simple supply and demand, society in general values the
services provided by bankers more than it values the services
provided by teachers. Just like it values diamonds more than it
values water. That is why there is such a big difference between what
teachers and bankers earn.

Going
back to Reich's Facebook post, it is therefore easy to see that by insisting that teachers are paid too little and asserting that a
nation's human capital is more valuable than its financial capital
(never mind the different marginal values that each profession brings to different people), Reich is attempting to force an objective viewpoint – his objective viewpoint – onto others. Seeing how people value
things differently at different times and under different sets of
circumstances, Reich is not actually making an economic argument, but
rather a political one; and an irrational one to boot.

And
I do believe that there is a word for that sort of behavior – demagoguery.

Monday, March 23, 2015

I
go through the news at least twice a day every day. For those who
frequent this blog, I am sure that it will not surprise you when I
say that I have tailored my newsfeed to focus on news stories that
are focused on business, finance, and economics.

However,
I saw a news story pop up the other day, the kind that doesn't
usually appear on my newsfeed, which grabbed my attention.

At
age 91, Lee Kuan
Yew has certainly lived a long life, and it is only natural that
sooner or later, death comes for saints and sinners alike. And just this morning, I saw that he has finally passed away. No one lives forever, and though his passing was expected, I still feel a deep sense of sadness knowing that he is gone.

I
was fifteen years old when I first read Alex
Josey's book Lee Kuan Yew: The Critical Years (1971-1978)
in my school's library. As I read about the political challenges that
Lee Kuan Yew had to face – striving to have Singapore become
accepted and then eventually being expelled from the Malaysian
Federation, the conflict with the communists, the delicate balancing
act that was needed to ensure Singapore's multicultural population
did not devolve into ethnic strife, the establishment of an
institutional and legal order that were needed to transform Singapore
from a former backwater colony to a developed nation – my respect
and admiration for him knew no bounds.

It was right around the time when the conflagration that came to be known as the Asian Economic Crisis engulfed so many lives when I first read about Lee Kuan Yew. Although Brunei, the country where I was living at the time, was not considered as one of the countries that was directly affected by the crisis, when the indirect effects of the crisis merged with Brunei's own internal problems at the time – which involved a playboy prince who had misspent billions of the country's money to maintain a hedonist lifestyle (see here, here, here, and here) – Brunei's economy went into a tailspin.As I compared him to other Asian leaders who were in power at the time, many of them now disgraced and/or forgotten, I felt bitterly angry that there wasn't anyone else who possessed the
determination, the vision, the self-confidence, and the intelligence
that Lee Kuan Yew possessed. I thought that Lee Kuan Yew was a giant
among men and that he was the kind of leader that Park
Chung-hee could have been; the kind of leader that world leaders
ought to emulate.

Then
for many years after that, I had stopped thinking of Lee Kuan Yew, until now.
The simple reason for it was that despite the ravaging effects of the Asian Economic Crisis and Amadeo's implosion, life still went on. I went on to graduate
from high school, went on to college and then graduated from college
as well, learned and experienced new things, gotten jobs, quit jobs,
paid bills, accumulated debt, went through personal hardships,
overcame some of them, and learned to adapt to those that I could not
overcome. Life has a way of moving on, it seems, and making us forget even things that we once
held most dear.

I
rejected Lee Kuan Yew's tribal
notion of “Asian
Values” – the implication that “Western-style” democracy
is somehow not applicable to Asian nations because of the particular
sets of culture that Asians are born and raised in. I rejected the
notion that culture determines an entire people's societal structure
into perpetuity.

The
United States' military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan and its
subsequent failures to “impose democracy” on those societies
might have somewhat exonerated Lee Kuan Yew's belief that cultural
differences could cause an imposition of democracy on those societies
to become a failure.

However,
comparing Asian countries – such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan,
Hong
Kong, and Singapore, which have developed their economies, social
structures, and their political values since the 1950s – to Iraq
which had been ruled by a fascist dictator and to Afghanistan that
had been ruled by the Taliban for decades
is a clear attempt at academic dishonesty. As the former countries' economies transformed from
labor-intensive economies to capital-intensive economies to
technology-intensive economies, people's priorities, thoughts,
beliefs, and political views have changed.

The
idea that people's culture is static is wrong. And it is clear that Lee Kuan Yew could not have failed to have known that. In other words, his notion of “Asian Values” was no more than a bald-faced attempt at retaining his own hold on power.

However, Lee Kuan Yew's most lasting legacy, which
will last into the future long after he is gone, is that he was the intellectual
voice behind the foisting of authoritarian capitalism. He succeeded where Park Chung-hee failed. Unsurprisingly,
Singapore has long been China's source of inspiration in its plans to
develop its political structure as well as its socio-economic
engineering programs (see here,
here,
here,
and here).

Considering
China's economic might, it is possible that the authoritarian capitalism that Lee Kuan Yew advocated and championed will define the twenty-first century as much as liberal capitalism
defined the twentieth century, which would seemingly nullify
Francis
Fukuyama's theories in his book, The End of History.
If Lee Kuan Yew's version of capitalism replaces the liberal form of capitalism
in much of the world's zeitgeist, which I think it could, the social changes
it could bring to the world will be enormous, in both good and
terrible ways.

It
has been many years since I thought that Lee Kuan Yew was the kind of
leader that world leaders ought to emulate. As I said earlier, I
stopped believing that a long time ago. Now, I
have lost all faith in the benefits of concentrated
political power even if it is in the hands of wise and benevolent leaders of whom I know none.

Although I now stand firmly against many things that Lee Kuan Yew stood for despite my youthful dalliances with authoritarianism, I am still grieving now that Lee Kuan Yew has breathed his last. Although I have
come to stand opposed to his leadership style and philosophy, and dearly hope that his legacy will not be as widespread as I fear it will be, what no
one can deny is that he was still an intellectual giant among men who
had achieved more than most can even dream. Though perhaps not
goodness, he has certainly achieved greatness and immortality in his
own right. As Richard
Nixon once said, had Lee Kuan Yew “lived in another time and
another place, he might have attained the world stature of a
Churchill,
a Disraeli,
or a Gladstone.”

Though I am grieving his passing, I do not grieve the authoritarian that he became. Rather, I am grieving the man that he could have been – an intellectual titan who
might have attained the world stature of a Locke,
a Jefferson,
or a Tocqueville
– a man who, above all else, might have used his staggering and formidable intelligence to champion the cause of freedom and
liberty.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

There
is an organization called Labor
411, which I came to learn of through my Facebook newsfeed. When I checked out the organization's website, its Mission Statement says, “We are committed to building a national Buy Union, Buy American movement as a means of
improving the safety and economic well being of union workers and
their families.”

I
did not need to read more than that. It's quite obvious from that
statement alone that it is nothing more than an interest group that is also not very well-versed in economics. To
see why buying locally, which the phrase “Buy Union, Buy American”
implies, is so utterly devoid of anything that resembles
intelligence, see here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
and here.

Coming
across an individual or a group of individuals or an organization
that is economically illiterate is hardly a new experience for me. I
come across more than my fair share of economic illiteracy on a daily basis
whenever I turn
on the news. So, it should not have bothered me too much.

What
annoyed me enough to warrant a separate
blog post was this picture that they posted on their Facebook page.

The
very first thing that caught my attention was the utter
ridiculousness of this “conversation.” It is obvious that this
conversation was not based on a real-life dialog between a CEO of
some company and one of his employees. For one thing, contrary to
popular belief, a business owner does not, in fact, have much to gain
by making his employees feel small and insignificant. In fact, that's
probably a good way to end
up on the news for all the wrong reasons.

What
this meme did instead was expose the psychological condition of
the creator of this particular meme, as well as those who liked it.
It shows that they have convinced themselves that the employer, the
business owner, senior management, the CEO, the rich, or whatever
other term that is used to describe those at the upper rungs of the
corporate ladder are evil.

By
combining ad hominem attacks, appeals to emotion, straw man
arguments, as well as forcing the viewers to rely on their own
anecdotal evidence, Labor 411 and its supporters have made an
argument without ever needing to make an actual argument. It is a
type of argument that bypasses logic by means of raised eyebrows,
shrugs, and snickers to express only one thing – disapproval –
and which in reality is a confession of intellectual impotence. It is
a type of argument whereby its supporters substitute moral judgment
for intellectual argument.

Secondly,
not only did this single picture betray their complete and utter
ignorance of economics, it also exposed their complete and utter
ignorance of how a business is even run.

Their
idea of how a business is run seems to go like this – the workers (aka the
slaves) toil away in the factories or cubicles (aka the cotton
fields) in order to make a meager wage (aka just to avoid being
whipped) while the employer (aka the master) lazes the day away while
counting his money in his comfortable office doing nothing more than
issuing orders, which anyone else with an elementary school education
could do.

This actually seems to be the way many people think business is actually run!Image Source

What
these people don't seem to realize is that that is just not how a
business works.

Case
in point, any business owner, ranging from your corner grocery store
to any one of your Fortune 500 companies, will tell you that
regardless of what happens, assuming that the business is being run legally and legitimately, at the end of the day, everyone else will
always get paid before the owner can pocket anything for himself. When running a business, profits only come later, if at all.

If
you are reading this, you should try this thought experiment. If you
worked at Company A for a whole month, and then your employer told
you that he did not have enough money to pay you your contractually obligated salary before he
drove off in his brand new BMW, how much longer would you keep working
there?

Not
only would you stop showing up to work the very next day, you would also most likely sue.

Workers are always paid before the owner can pocket anything for himself because a worker's wages are guaranteed
by law. However, an entrepreneur's profits are not guaranteed by
law. There is no law that states that an entrepreneur is guaranteed
the right to make a profit. Whether the entrepreneur makes a profit or not depends on his own abilities, entrepreneurial skills, and luck.

So,
a business owner has to provide the money to make sure that the
building and the facilities are built, maintained, furnished, and
equipped. The business owner also has to pay his workers regularly for
doing their work unless he wishes to be sued in court, which will
likely end up costing him a lot more money. His suppliers will also have to be
paid unless he wishes to be sued by them, too. He has to pay property
taxes and payroll taxes unless he wants to make an
enemy of the government. Only later, if the business is successful,
does the owner see a return on his investment.

A
very good example of this is Amazon.
According to Forbes Magazine, Amazon was ranked as the thirty-fifth biggest American corporation as the
company reported US$74.5 billion in sales and US$274 million in
earnings in 2014.
So, most people think of Amazon as a huge mega-business that has an almost unlimited stash of money; and to some
people, Amazon is now a
villainous company that tramples on everyone else for the sake of
its own profit margins.

However,
what many people forget (or never even realized) is that even though
Amazon was founded in 1994, the company did
not make any profit until 2002. For seven whole years, which
is much longer than most businesses last (8
out of 10 businesses fail within the first 18 months), Amazon hemorrhaged money, and lots of it. But during those seven years, Amazon's employees
and its suppliers kept collecting their checks.

So, if
anything, what the meme that caused this whole blog post should have said was:

Him:
Lemme tell you something. The fact of the matter is that we all
worked really hard to get where we are. It was a hard slog, but we
made it. You put in the work and the determination that this company
could not have done without. And I took the big risks trying to steer
this thing through, which the company could also not have done
without. I think you and I earned the right to buy a nice thing for
ourselves just this once.

But
that would have been too wordy, and it would have made too much
sense. And why would anyone allow something like that to get in the
way of trying to score cheap political points?

Monday, March 16, 2015

The
Straw Man Argument is a type of argument that is used to
misrepresent someone else's argument, by way of exaggeration or
misrepresentation or complete fabrication, with the intention of
making the other person's argument easier to attack. It is a
dishonest method that almost always undermines rational debate.

As
such, almost everyone hates this form of argument. However, many
people still resort to this kind of argument on a daily basis –
some deliberately, while others unknowingly. And one of the most
prominent Straw Man Arguments that have been used so excessively that
many people have come to accept the Straw Man as gospel truth is the concept of
Trickle-Down Economics.

Pope
Francispontificated against it, calling it a “a
crude and naïve
trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the
sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.”(I am not sure if Pope Francis is the right person to talk about naïveté or the idiocy of faith. See here and here.)

Trickle-Down
Economics does not actually exist. It is a lie. “Trickle-Down
Economics” was a phrase that was devised in the United States in
the 1980s when the Democratic Party needed a a catchy zinger to
attack President Reagan's
economic policy.
The phrase was a remarkable political slogan as it painted Reagan and
other advocates of tax reduction as sycophants who had all been
bought and paid for by greedy billionaires at the expense of the poor
and the middle class.

One
of the most prolific economists of our time, Thomas
Sowell, once challenged
anybody “to quote any economist outside of an insane asylum who had
ever advocated this “trickle-down” theory.”

To
date, no one has ever adequately answered that challenge.

Quoting
Thomas Sowell again:

Let’s
do something completely unexpected: Let's stop and think. Why would
anyone advocate that we “give” something to A in hopes that it
would trickle down to B? Why in the world would any sane person not
give it to B and cut out the middleman? But all this is moot, because
there was no trickle-down theory about giving something to anybody in
the first place.

Those
who advocate lower taxes, of which I am one, have never made their
case by supporting the idea of transferring wealth from the masses to
the rich. Rather, they emphasize the creation of additional wealth
and jobs when businesses are not hampered by burdensome regulations
and steep taxes.

However,
even that is only half of the argument. Those who champion lower
taxes do not support lowering taxes only for the rich, but also for
everyone else. Crazy as it may sound, no free market
capitalist has ever claimed that society
would become wealthier because
the
rich would spend more. Rather, they argue – correctly – that tax
cuts in general would stimulate the economy. That is because lowering
taxes is based on the idea that if the government lowers taxes, the
people – both rich and poor – will have more of their own money
and will, therefore,
tend to engage in more economic activity.

Therefore,
the phrases “trickle-down economics” and “tax cuts for the
rich” are nothing more than the inventions of a desperate political
mind that did not have the ability to debate the merits of an
opposing viewpoint. After all, what easier way can there be to “win”
a debate than to invent a viewpoint that no one holds, attack that
viewpoint, and then claim intellectual victory?This is not to say that there is no need for a real debate about which policies are needed in order to promote economic growth. With all due respect to Grover Norquist, God knows that lowering marginal tax rates alone is not a panacea (see here and here). That debate is badly needed. Unfortunately, however, demagogues are far too busy trying to slay the imaginary “trickle-down” dragon.

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About Me

My name is John Lee and I am currently the editor and writer behind the independently-run blog, “The Korean Foreigner.”

Recently, I have also begun to work as a freelance copy editor for Freedom Factory. Here, with permission from Freedom Factory, I shall post English translations of Freedom Factory’s weekly newsletter “Freedom Voice.”